Tag: abuse | A Banana Peeled

Try to see it from my point of view

Posted on September 23, 2024 by Minna Hong • 0 Comments

I have more to say about family dysfunction, dating, points of view, and other things related. In the last post, I was saying what was my deal-breaker in dating someone. It’s not race, religion, or gender (to a certain extent). It’s political affiliation, specifically being a Republican. That can expand more widely into cishet white dudes because there are so many layers of privilege going on that it tires me just to think of it.

I want to say up front. This is not saying that all cishet white dudes, some of my best friends are cishet white dudes, blah blah blah. But. I just don’t have the heart for it any longer. Trying to relate to them, I mean. I think everyone should be treated with decency and respect, yes. That doesn’t mean I need to give everyone a chance in the dating world.

Side note: This is something I firmly believe–you don’t have to date anyone you don’t want to date. I don’t think it’s cool if someone is prejudiced against, say, black people, I think it’s perfectly legit not to date them. More to the point, it’s a service to black people to not date them if you aren’t attracted to them because who wants someone dating them out of pity/guilt? I had white women who felt they should date me to show how progressive they were, and believe it or not, I was not turned on by that. At all.

Here’s my point. Everyone looks at things from their own point of view. The trick is to realize that other people don’t necessarily think the way you do. And, if you want to be advanced, you could try to imagine where the other person was coming from.

This is the problem in describing abuse. There is just no way to give the complete context other people need in order to understand what has happened. Each individual instance may not be a big deal in and of itself, but oftentimes, it’s the death of a thousand paper cuts.

Differing vantage points

Posted on September 22, 2024 by Minna Hong • 0 Comments

I’ve been talking about family dysfunction and abuse in general. It’s difficult to talk about because in order to have a conversation about something, you need a common starting point. You have to have agreed upon boundaries as to what the conversation will entail. In discussing families and abuse, the person listening has to have at least a rudimentary knowledge of such things happening.

It makes such a difference. If you are someone from a happy and well-adjusted family who does not have any friends who have dysfunctional families, then that person, let’s call them Alex, may not be able to understand where I’m coming from. In the last post, I talked about how my mother has no boundaries, and what’s more, she feels that it’s her right as a mother to meddle with my brother and my relationship. I’ll get back to her later. For now, though, I want to talk about my father.

I have a story I tell about my father to indicate his narcissim. It’s the one about when I was a kid, I never got cold. We found out when I was a teenager that I had hyperthyroidism (Graves’ disease). That was why I never got cold. My father would say, “Put on a coat because I’m cold.” People either didn’t get what I was trying to emphasize (“Why are you mad at your parent for caring if you’re cold?”) or said I should do it to placate my father.

The first is vastly more common, and they don’t read/hear what I’m actually saying. My father doesn’t say, “Put on a coat because it’s cold.” He said, “Put on a a coat because I’m cold.” Meaning, beacuse he’s cold. Not beacuse I’m cold. It never occurred to him that I would feel differently than he would.

In addition, he came up with a different narartive of his own as to what happened. He said that he would tell me to put on a coat, and I would refuse because he didn’t ask nicely. That I wanted him to say ‘please’. That’s certainly possible that I threw that out there because knowing him, he probably ordered me to put on a coat rather than ask. However, that was never the main reason. The main reason was because I wasn’t fucking cold!

Dyfunction dysfunction, what’s your function?

Posted on September 21, 2024 by Minna Hong • 0 Comments

One thing rarely talked about when discussing abuse is how coping mechanisms that have been developed to deal with the abuse are faulty in healthy situations. It’s something that comes up on Ask A Manager on a regular basis because she talks about how being in a toxic work environment can warp you to what is ok and what isn’t. The wildest example I can think of is the letter writer who bit a coworker and in the update, said it was considered ok by her colleagues because the guy is a jerk. The LW’s conclusion was that people with normal jobs found them boring and hated it, so, yeah, her work environment was toxic, but, hey, at least it was interesting. Many commenters pointed out that the LW was getting warped by the toxic environment.

I bring this up because abuse does the same. In the last post, I mentioned that I was resigned to managing my parents because they weren’t going to change. The way I deal with them, though, is not something that would work well with healthy people. Basically, I just placate them and get through a conversation as painlessly as possible. I keep it as surface-y as possible as well. The goal is to not say anything of importance unless I absolutely have to.

You can imagine how this would not work well with people I actually want to be close to. You can’t shine off a friend and expect them to be happy about it. A true friend, I mean. Not just an acquaintance. When the tragedy happened in February, I told my close friends about it. I was devastated and needed the comfort/support. I would not think about holding back with them, which is the normal and healthy way to deal with it.

The longer you’ve been in an abusive situation, the harder it is to recalibrate your thinking. I am low-contact with my parents, but it’s still enough contact to keep me off balance. I have a shield up around them that I can’t afford to let done. Explaining that to other people is futile.

I’ve said it before, but it’s a matter of context. For people who have loving parents, it’s nearly impossible to imagine parents who don’t love their children. Or rather, it might be imaginable, but it’s not something that can be understood if you haven’t been in the situation. Like anything else that is the outlier, really.

The family dysfunction don’t stop

Posted on September 20, 2024 by Minna Hong • 0 Comments

I have mourned my entire life for the loss of a sense of family. Or rather, since I realized that my family was so fucked up. It started when I was in my twenties, but I was more intent on fighting against it back then. I was angry as fuck, and I didn’t know how to properly express it. Everything up to that point was a lie or told with such spin, it migcht as well be a lie. I was extremely angry at God (with a G) in my twenties, in part because of those lies. And by extension, at my parents, though that was not safe to voice.

Yesterday, I talked about the consequences of a lifetime of family dysfunction, and I want to explore it further today.

I feel like we all have definitive moments in which we can decide to change the way we are–or not. I hasten to add that most people don’t grab those moments by the horn–me included. It’s a fact of life that it takes a lot to consciously make a change. And, more importantly, to keep it up. I made the choice to try out Taiji over twenty years ago. My first teacher was a horror show, and I gave up after close to a year. I didn’t try again for several years. When I did, I hated it at first (as I did during my first try at it0. Why did I stick it out? Because I’m stubborn and because I needed something to back up my swagger.

Another time was when I moved to the East Bay to attend grad school for a year. That was a bad decision in retrospect, but at least I got something out of it. Would I have done it if I had the chance to make the choice over again? No. Life doesn’t work that way, though.

Side note: My brother has said more than once that he had no regrets–meaning he would not change anything about his life. I get the reason why (it’s made him who he is and he’s where he is today because of it), but I could not disagree more. I have so many regrets about my life, and I would have changed them in a heartbeat.

My parents, though, have not changed hardly at all in all the time I’ve known them. Well, not in a positive way, anyway. If anything, they are more conservative now than ever, and they are acting as if they were in the 1970s. It does not surprise me, but it makes me cringe. Fortunately, I do not have to be around them in public because I would just not deal with it well.

How deep is the dysfunction

Posted on September 19, 2024 by Minna Hong • 0 Comments

One of the hardest things about knowing people who are deeply flawed is that it’s difficult to convey the flaws without sounding unhinged. Because other people don’t have the proper context to absorb what you are telling them. For example, I had a horrible personal tragedy in February of last year. I told my friends and selected members of my family, but I most emphatically did not tell my parents. Why? Because I knew they would make it all about them and not about me. How did I know this? Because this is what they’ve done all my life.

I finally told them in July or August. That was enough time for me to gather the inner resources needed to deal with my parents. The next time my mother brought it up, I was able to tell her the news. I told her it had been several months, but she still reacted as if I had punched her in the face. She asked why I hadn’t told her earlier and sounded so hurt. That’s normal. I don’t blame her for that reaction. But, then, I told her she did not need to tell my father and probably shouldn’t because it would just upset him. And, selfishly, if he was upset, it would mean that he would pass the upset to me. We hung up and not five minutes later, she called back. She had told my father and he was extremely upset.

He dumped his upset all over me and then said that we should pray together. I can’t tell him I don’t pray because he would not understand it so I said that he could pray. He gave the phone to my mother and insisted that she pray right then and there on the phone. My brain disconnected as my mother prayed and I went to my safe place in my mind so I wouldn’t either explode at my mother or slam the phone down in rage.

Back story: I don’t pray. I am not a Christian and have not been one for decades. I don’t believe in prayer and I still have some bitterness over the whole thing. In general, if people don’t shove it in my face then I’m fine with it. This was shoving it in my face and it was for them, not me. My mother knows I don’t pray and yet, she did it anyway because my father wanted it.

Speculation: My mother told my father in part so she could pray at me. She knows I don’t pray, but she doesn’t like it. She has claimed that she could not lie to my father, but this wasn’t even lying. She simply had to keep her damn mouth shut–which she can’t/won’t do. As I was listening to my mother pray, I was completely numb. It’s not an ideal way of dealing with the situation, but it was the least-harmful.

I told K about it, and she could not believe it. She admitted that when I told her I had put off telling my mother about my tragedy, she (K) thought I was being…not hyperbolic, but exaggerating or overreacting. Not in a negative way, but more that she wanted to think my mother would be a reasonable human being about it. K added, “But you were right.”

Yeah, I was. Because I know my mother. In fact, her resoponse was actually more muted than I had expected. But, a few weeks later, my brother told me that my mother had called him and told him to check in on me because of the tragedy. My mother said I said it happened a month ago. Which, I did not. I didn’t tell her it was in February, but I did say several months. My mother hears what she wants to hear.

Every culture has jerks

Posted on September 7, 2023 by Minna Hong • 0 Comments

One of my pet peeves is when people excuse abuse by citing culture. “That’s part of the culture” is valid for many tihngs, but not when it comes to abusing another person. I was reading a post on Ask A Manager with the question from a reader asking if they could thrive under a hypercritical manager. My immediate thought without reading the post was, “Yeah, but only if it’s for a evry short amount of time and you have a very thick skin.”

Then I read the post and became more concerned with each paragraph. The ltetter writer (LW) started by saying they were in a competitive technical field and had always been great at it. Until this boss, whom they call Jane. LW said that they knew Jane was just trying to coach them, but then went on to say that Jane made them feel like a complete failure. Jane said their work was 95% good, but LW felt as if 95% of the feedback from Jane was frustrated, critical, and accusatory.

This was when I started to get concerned. I mean, I was already biased in the beginning, but the first few paragrpahs did not paint a pretty picture. “She doesn’t really give positive feedback” cemented it for me. I didn’t actually have to read any more to know that the boss was a lost cause. It got worse–so much worse.

LW’s colleagues told LW that they would never work with Jane and that she made them want to pull their hair out. She’s made many people cry, including the LW. It broke my heart that the LW was trying so hard to be fair to their boss, who was crushing them under her foot. The ysaid they had lost their motivation, their creative spark, and was their self-worth.

I related so hard to this because of my parents. I will get to that in a second. There was one comment about how it might be cultural difference and blah, blah, blah. Obviosuly, I did not agree with this comment. The person claimed they worked with people from 50 different cultures and that French people, for example, were like tihs, more interested in pointing out errors. Someone who acutally worked in France said, no, they were blunt, yes, but not cruel. Another person working in France said that they had a boss who was like this and she got fired.

And it’s interesting that the person making the initial comment of that particular thread was not French (they were from New York). It’s a form of soft bigotry that is annoying as hell. When someone who is not part of a culture broadly stereotypes that culture and ignores evidence to the contrary–even when it’s a purportedly positive stereotype–it’s still bigotry.

Side note: It’s similar to ow Asian people used to be called the model minority and praised for being smart, quiet, and obedient. By the way, there was a time when people used to gush about how smart Asians were. I used to snap, “That’s because oll the stupid ones are in Asia!” Which I would not say now because it’s cruel, but my point was that for East Asians who came here in the 60s, it was for grad school. It caused a brain drain back in Asia ,and many of them didn’t go back.

Resting Blank Face

Posted on January 18, 2023 by Minna Hong • 0 Comments

When I was young, I was taught that my emotions were not allowed. More specifically, my negative emotions. I was not supposed to be angry or sad or upset. I was not supposed to disagree with my parents in any way. I was supposed to paste a smile on my face and act like I was happy/grateful/upbeat all the time.

I have to say. Upbeat is not in my vocabulary. Not by a long shot. Even when I’m happy or elated about something, I’m very lowkey. I have had to learn in online communication that I can come across as flat, so I need to add emojis and exclamation points. I’m verbose, yet, but I’m also factual. I don’t tend to be flowery in my writing, so I can come across as dry.

In real life, I have perefcted the blank face. It’s my resting face, and I have to actively add emotion to it if I don’t want to be perceived as being emotionless. I had a Taiwanese roommate once tell me that he could not see a guy asking me out. This did not come out of nowhere, by the way. I was complaining about being hit on as I did my moring walk. At least once a week, a guy would try to come onto me. It was always white and black guys, though–never Asian guys.

When my Taiwanese roommate said this, I retorted that not all guys were afraid of a strong womnan. It wasn’t very tactful of me, but he hadn’t been tactful, either. He was very much into the steretoypical Asian woman, but then he would complain about how bored he was of the women he was dating.

Not only had I trained myself not to show my emotions, but I also trained myself not to show pain. Physical pain, I mean. As a result, my pain threshold is insanely high. When we were doing chin na (joint manipulation) techniques in Taiji, this was a problem. You’re supposed to tap out when the pain was too much, but I would never tap out. Not because I was trying to be hard, but because I truly could not feel it.

My teacher finally decided that I could only practice with her because she did not want me to be hurt. She was the only one experienced enough to realize when to back off without me having to tap out. She talked to her teacher about it and one time, he was in our class to practice/watch. He suggested i stand on my tiptoes, and then i was abble to feel the pain. I did, and he demonstrated. I automatically felt the pain and tapped out. He said that when you were on your toes (generic you), you can’t tense up your muscles/joints.

Ever more bitter, rarely more sweet

Posted on April 9, 2022 by Minna Hong • 0 Comments

When you’re in a situation that feels hopeless, it’s hard not to become bitter. There is a commentor on one of the blogs I read who is oozing in negativity. Having read about her situation, it’s understandable. Unfortunately, she’s at the place where she feels like she can do nothing about it but constantly complain.

I’ve been there. I am currently there re: my family. It’s funny because the medical trauma I recently went through* has been a boon in many ways. It feels weird to say especially because it included me dying twice But, it’s the truth. I realized a lot about myself during that time. Most of it good, some of it…sobering.

On the good tip: I fucking love my body. Decades of body issues disappeared in a flash. That’s not exactly true. They were already starting to mitigate with the help of Taiji, but when I left the hospital, you could not say shit to me about my body or my face. Not that my parents didn’t try, believe you me. They wanted to go there with my weight, which I had shut down decades ago. I explicitly told them they could not bring up my weight. Of course they moaned and groaned about it because ‘they were just worried about my health’. Uh huh. That’s straight-up bullshit, by the way.

When I was anorexic and my junior counselors in college told my mom, she had nothing to say. N-O-T-H-I-N-G. No words of concern or encouragement. The only thing she had to say was that she was jealous my waist was smaller than hers. So, health concerns? Hell, naw. That wasn’t it at all. It was purely weight and how I looked. She put me on my first diet when I was seven, saying I would have a beautiful face if I lost weight.

When I look at pics of me as a teenager, I was chunky yes, but I wasn’t grotesque as I was made to feel by my mother. I was thick in part because I have dense muscles, but I was fine. My mom monitoring every morsel that went into my mouth gave me a complex that lasted decades.

Taiji started making me feel at ease in my body. Then it helped me walk away from a minor car accident with only a big bruise on my stomach from the seatbelt. Or maybe the air bag popping. Other than that, I walked away without a scratch. I couldn’t say the same for my car, sadly.

That’s when I started to realize that my body was a wondrous machine. After waking up from my medical coma (walking pneumonia, two cardiac arrests, stroke), I was in awe how my body had taken a beating and kept on ticking. I don’t think can overemphasize how bleak the prognosis was.

The psychological troll…er, toll

Posted on December 9, 2021 by Minna Hong • 0 Comments

I didn’t sleep well last night. Or rather, I didn’t sleep long. I slept hard, but only six hours. Then I couldn’t sleep any longer. Normally, I wouldn’t be surprised by that because that’s how much I used to sleep before going to the hospital. Since I got out of the hospital, however, I’ve been sleeping eight hours a night. Very surprising! Well, not really, given the narcotics, sedatives, and antibiotics I was hopped up on. They were some very powerful drugs and they didn’t exit my system completely until I was home for two-and-a-half weeks.

Afterwards, I still was able to mostly sleep eight hours a night, only waking up once or two. In the last few days, however, my sleep has been spotty. I think it’s because I’m detoxing from the parental visit. I had a hard time falling asleep last nigh t and I woke up early.

I had three emails from my mother waiting for me when I got up, which did not improve my mood. My parents had to quarantine for fourteen days in a hotel upon returning to Taiwan–which means they have very little to do. Which means my mother can email me several times a day. Which is annoying, in case you can’t tell from my terse sentences.

Here’s the thing about abuse. It’s difficult to tell how deleterious it is while it’s still ongoing. It’s terrible, yes, but it becomes normal when it’s continuous. I mean, that’s just the way life works. Even the most unusual event, positive or negative, becomes normal when it continues to happen or enough time has passed from the time it happened. Take, for example, my recent medical trauma. It’s not every day you suffer from pneumonia, two cardiac arrests, and a stroke, and live to tell the tale.

Side Note: I was reading an advice column and a writer wrote in that her mother had suffered a stroke. It was tangential to the actual issue, but the advice columnist said that having to have someone care for you after a stoke is common. That hit me hard for some reason. I mean, it’s common sense and it’s not as if I didn’t know it before. But seeing it in print drove home the fact of how lucky I was to survive two cardiac arrests and a stroke with almost no damage. Seriously. I’ve gotten the clean bill of health from both my cardiologist and my neurologist–which is incredible.

But faaaaaaamily

Posted on October 29, 2021 by Minna Hong • 0 Comments

Family is considered sacrosanct in society. At least, the idea of family is. It’s given lip service and dragged up any time a Republican resigns in disgrace (as in spending more time with his family–and it’s nearly always a ‘his’). Prejudicial attitudes are wrapped in faux concern for the children, which is laughable because it’s always things like trans women in the bathroom–which has no affect on anyone other than the trans woman who would just like to use the right bathroom, thank you very much.

Ahem.

When I woke up in the hospital and realized my parents were in Minnesota, let’s just say my first reaction was not one of gratitude. In the Caring Bridge journal (which I read later), there was mention of how great it is to have family around is such difficult times. That is predicated on it being a supportive and helpful family, which is most emphatically not the case with my family. Or rather, one member of my family.

Let me illustrate with a story. The second or third day I woke up, my parents came to visit me. My father started rambling about missing my childhood and wanting to bring me to Taiwan so he could protect me and we could be a family. Keep in mind that I’ve lived in Minnesota for the vast majority of my life and consider it my home. Also, there’s a reason I only talked to my parents once or twice a month before I landed in the hospital–and it wasn’t for a lack of time to chat. I had plenty of that. The idea of being dragged off to Taiwan was horrifying to me. The last time my brother and his family went to Taiwan, I most adamantly refused to go. Why? Because the last time I went to Taiwan, I became deeply suicidal and had to stop myself from walking into the ocean. I’m not being flippant or hyperbolic here. I was deeply depressed the entire time I was there and I vowed never to return. I would qualify that now, but the idea of living anywhere near my parents, permanently, is the stuff nightmares are made of.

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